Saturday, January 03, 2009

[the immortals] do they have more fun



Think about if you accidentally become immortal. This, from Douglas Adams, courtesy of the Hitchhiker project:
Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged was - indeed, is - one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings.

Most of those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed, he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had his immortaility inadvertantly thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.


To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.
In the end, it was Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55 when you know you've taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people's funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everybody in it in particular.
This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing that would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this:

He would insult the Universe.


That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in Alphabetical Order.


When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say, "A man can dream, can't he?"


And so he had started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with a computer capable of handling all the data processing involved in keeping track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the horrifically complicated routes involved.

What would you do if you found yourself accidentally immortal? You've all the money you're ever likely to need, you've seen all the movies, you've visited all the planets. You've been altruistic to the universe. You've been a bstd. You've tried it all. The health is fine.

On the other hand, what would you do if you were mortal, you aged and the systems were beginning to break down? You've done all you're usefully going to do, the kids have grown up, your mates are all dead, you're wondering why you're hanging about.

Would you want to be immortal?

13 comments:

  1. "Would you want to be immortal?"

    Yep.

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  2. Is this an experiment in setting referendum questions? Had you asked the question "Do you want to die?" (logically the same) would you get different answers? And if the obvious answer was not "yes" would the world's religions ever have been established?

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  3. Who wants to live forever? Sounds like a good title for a song!

    No, it would get rather boring I should imagine. Especially when everyone you hold dear has kicked the bucket.

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  4. I'd suggest that in certain states of being, time and number don't matter.

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  5. I would not like to me immortal.Life would really hav no meaning,although I do like his idea of insulting everyone in the universe. :)

    I would imagine life would have no meaning when our chances for sex became nil.

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  6. Nah. But thank you for asking.

    (Nice blog.)

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  7. Thanks for those words of wisdom, people.

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  8. Wowbagger's life was pretty futile, heading aross the universe insulting people. I wouldn't like to be immortal but it wouldn't mind it if I could only be killed in bed with several attractive and energetic women.... The not-wife would kill me!

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  9. I have read in Greek Mythology that the Gods envied us humans...because we are mortal :)

    Any and every moment should remind us of our mortality if we are to live life fully, loving every bit of it...

    all the issues of life becomes meangingless, when one is reminded of the chance of dying the next moment..

    Interesting read, James..

    wishes,
    devika

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  10. No, but I do like the comment that Tom made about "Do you want to die".

    Very interesting, I bet you would get different answers if it was posed that way.

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  11. We should pose that other question and see what the response is.

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